Sunday, May 19, 2013

Eucalyptus Successfully Used in Fight to Control Malaria

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation intends to finish off dreaded Malaria in the next 20 years. One wonders if the Eucalyptus Tree will be a continuing part of the effort.

The following article has been taken from what must be the most exhaustive website on the subject of eucalyptus. The story of Eucalyptus and its use to reduce, or in some cases eradicate, malaria reads like a mystery thriller. I have slightly rearranged the paragraphs to increase the intrigue.

One of the most enthralling chapters in the history of eucalyptus is
its relationship to the eradication of malaria. Throughout the nineteenth
century, it was believed that the eucalyptus fought malaria simply by disinfecting
the ground and air. By the end of the century, the cause of malaria was
found, and the eucalyptus' true relationship to the disease became known.

As in any mystery there are theories. Early on there were many theories
of how the eucalyptus miraculously stopped malaria. Also there were glowing
accounts of real life experiences of the successes made in the fight against
malaria by the eucalyptus.

Very few people know that California had malarial problems. Malaria
could be found in the Sacramento Valley and Kern County last century. In
the Third Biennial Report (1874-75) of the California State Board of Health,
the secretary of the board, Dr. Thomas M. Logan, was the author of a section
entitled "Malarial Fevers and Consumption in California." Much of the report
was about the eucalyptus and its ability to suppress the spread of malaria.
He reprinted a contemporary article taken from the Kern County Courier
reporting on one farmer's experience with malaria and eucalyptus:
In regard to the anti-malaria influence
of the eucalyptus, we have this conclusive evidence. We have given
it what we regard as a reasonably fair test on our own farm. This
is cultivated by two families, or companies, of Chinese. One company lives
near the north and the other the south end of the premises, about three-fourths
of a mile apart. The localities both parties inhabit are favorable
to the development of malaria. The soil is rich, moist, and teeming
with vegetable life, and the free sweep of the prevailing wind is
obstructed by the intervention of dense thickets. As might be expected,
they have, every year, during the heated term, suffered with malarial
fever. Last winter we determined to test the much vaunted virtues
of the eucalyptus. In February we gave to the party at the north
end two ounces of the seed with the directions that it should be
planted near the house. It germinated finely, and produced several
thousands of young plants, but the frost killed most of them. About twelve hundred, however, survived. These, when the heated term commenced,
had attained an average height of two feet, and emitted a strong
aromatic or camphorous odor, perceptible at a distance of a hundred
yards. In due time the party at the south end were visited
by their usual mildly distressing fever, but up to the present time
we have looked in vain for the first symptoms to develop in the other.
They are all, to their own astonishment, in the most robust health.
These trees now average more than three feet in height, and the atmosphere
of the house is strongly impregnated with their odor . . . and propose,
the coming season, to plant it on all the waste places and corners
on our farm we can spare from the other purposes. If everybody would
do likewise, the great valley of Kern County might soon take rank among the sanitariums of the State .
. . " 314
Concluding, Dr. Logan wrote, "These evidences go far to establish the
fact that the eucalyptus globulus has a good effect in preventing the spread
of malarial diseases . . . "315

In the California State Board Health's Tenth Biennial Report (1886-88)
appeared an article with the title "Irrigation and Forestry Considered
in Connection with Malarial Diseases." Use of eucalyptus and other plants
were being used to stem the spread of malaria as seen in this excerpt:
It is a well established fact that in malarial
districts the planting of shrubs and trees has had the effect to
greatly modify, if not entirely remove, the malarious influence . . . But
wonderful far efficacious than all, owing to the rapidity of its growth,
its wonderful powers as an absorbent, and the balsamic exhalation
of its essential oil, it is Australian blue gum tree (Eucalyptus globulus).316

Dr. W.P. Gibbons of the Medical Society of the State of California
wrote, "It has not been proved, though asserted until belief is established,
that the aroma of the eucalyptus is effective in preventing the incubation
of intermittents."317 The scientific and medical fields knew that the eucalyptus
arrested malaria but didn't really know why. The assumption by some was
it was disinfected the air.

There were numerous reports worldwide of the success the eucalyptus
was having in treating malaria. In 1874, the periodical California Horticulturalist
contained such reports. For example in Cape Colony in southern Africa came
this testimony: "In the spring of 1867, I planted upon this farm 13,000
plants of the Eucalyptus globulus. In July of that year, the season in
which the fevers appear, the farmers were completely free from them . .
. "318

Another example is this report from Constantine (Turkey) where eucalyptus
had been planted: "The atmosphere is constantly charged with aromatic vapors,
the farmers are no longer troubled with disease, and their children are
bright with health and vigor."319

M. Gimbert in 1874 made these comments before the French Academy of
Sciences concerning the eucalyptus:
A tree springing up with incredible rapidity,
capable of absorbing from the soil ten times its weight of water
in twenty-four hours, and giving to the atmosphere antiseptic camphorated
emanations, should play a very important part in improving the health
of the malarious districts . . . it has the property of absorbing
directly from marshes, thus preventing fermentations which are produced,
and paralyzing the animal miasma proceeding from them which might
arise from them."320

During this period of time, throughout the world, the eucalyptus was
labeled "fever tree"

Australia known as "almost fever free."

because it generally stopped the spread of deadly
fevers. In Valencia, Spain, eucalyptus trees had to be protected by guards
to prevent leaves from being stripped off by its citizens.321 And what
did the Australians think about their treasured native tree and malaria?

In 1876, J. Bosisto read a paper before the Royal Society of Victoria
(Australia) entitled, "Is the Eucalyptus a Fever-Destroying Tree?" He opened
with this statement:
Its (eucalyptus) power to absorb considerable
moisture, and to permeate the air with its peculiar odour, led to
the belief that this tree . . . exerts a beneficial influence upon
malarious districts . . . is the eucalyptus a fever-destroying tree? Or,
in other words does it tend to lessen malaria or to destroy miasmatic
poison?322

Bosisto then tells of his investigations in Australia, commenting:
"Australia on the whole may be said to be pretty free from virulent endemic
or miasmatic fevers, and the latter may be said to exist only as the eucalyptus
recedes."323

After analyzing eucalyptus oils and resins, Bosisto was not able to
find anything in them that had the power to oxygenate and purify the air
more so than other plants.324 He noted that eucalyptus oils permeating
the air, did refresh one's breathing.325 Bosisto concludes his paper with
some support of the eucalyptus' value in fighting malaria, but the question
is still virtually unanswered. He wrote, "In conclusion, may we not say
with some authority that the evidence set forth in this paper on our own
vegetation is in favour of the eucalyptus being a fever-destroying tree?"326

The most famous case concerning eucalyptus treatment of malaria comes
from the Tre Fontaine Monastery near Rome, Italy. Each year during the
"fever season," the monks would come down with malaria. Swamps were near,
and the monks worked the fields returning to the monastery at night. It
was thought that the night air carried malaria. Eucalyptus trees were planted
in the swamps reclaiming the land with their ability to drain the water
through their root systems. With the water gone the mosquitoes had no habitat
in which to breed and carry on activity. Malaria fever greatly lessened,
but a Dr. Montechiare, who was a physician for years in that area, was
not convinced that eucalyptus affected the disposition of malaria.327

Scientists and physicians knew that the eucalyptus did something to
interfere with the process of malaria, but what it did and how it did it
wasn't clear. Many simply disclaimed it until the cause of malaria was
found.

In California, malaria reached its peak in the 1880's. Blue gums were
planted with fervor because it was generally felt they purified the air
and had some effect on malaria. This comes from the Pacific Rural Press:
A paper read before the California Academy
of Natural Sciences in 1879 reported that the Southern Pacific Railroad
had planted 1,000 eucalyptus trees between the train stations and
the marshes to ward off malaria in the interior valley. The number
of malaria cases had dropped from twenty-five to eight.329

It was thought that malaria came from moist, rich soil escaping into
the night air during the summer months. Night air is usually damp and chilly,
and thought to carry a multitude of maladies of which one was malaria.
The word "malaria" in Latin means "bad air." By virtue of its
aroma, it would be only natural to suppose that the eucalyptus somehow
purified the "mal aria" or bad air.

It was also thought that the oils dropping from the eucalyptus leaves
and the gums secreted from the bark, disinfected the ground around the
tree. These secretions had a purifying effect just like its aroma did to
the surrounding air.

In his 1895 work, Eucalyptus, Abbott Kinney gave many examples of the
success eucalyptus was having in arresting malarial fever. Some of have
been noted above. Kinney thought that malaria entered the body through
the ingestion of water, milk, or food. The malarial germ, he felt, was
released into the air by turning over soil in warm, marshy land, and some
way it got into what humans ate or drank. He cited Bakersfield cases where
unboiled water from shallow wells (he felt) caused malaria. He called it
the "Bakersfield Fever." After the water was boiled from these wells the
malaria disappeared he reported.330 Kinney did experiments with meat, water,
and eucalyptus leaves. He wanted to see if eucalyptus stopped the growth
of bacteria. In results were inconclusive.331

The connection was beginning to be seen between disease and insects
especially mosquitoes. Kinney used an eucalyptus smudge to kill mosquitoes,
but it didn't work.332 The Pacific Rural Press reported in 1876, " . .
. being very much in his sleep by mosquitoes, took it into his head to
place a young plant of eucalyptus in his bedroom over night. From that
moment the insects disappeared and he slept in comfort."333 There was a
doctor who rubbed eucalyptus leaves on his horse to drive the insects away.
Pillows were sprinkled with an eucalyptus powder to keep insects off them.334

The Tulare Register ran this testimony: "Our house was surrounded with
blue gum trees. We always slept with our doors and windows open and were
never seriously bothered while just a few rods away the stock would be
covered and almost perish with the great numbers (mosquitoes) tormenting
them."335

Finally the cause of malaria was known. In a 1900 issue of The Forester,
published by the American Forestry Association, there was an article entitled,
"The Eucalyptus in the Tropics: Its Rapid Growth and Value as a Sanitary
Agent, Acting as a Preventative of Malaria." It told of the cause of malaria,
and urged the planting of eucalyptus to dry up swampland thereby removing
the mosquito's breeding habitat. The article went on to discuss the positive
effect eucalyptus had on the air.336 This theme could be seen too in the
1897 yearbook of the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

The female anopheles mosquito carries the malaria parasite and implants
it in a human's blood system. The mosquito's home and breeding ground is
generally in a area of standing water such as swampland. Because the eucalyptus
absorbs large amounts of water, it can drain swampland thereby destroying
the habitat of the mosquito, and consequently stopping the spread of malaria.

With regard to the sanitary value of the tree, it has been strongly
stated that its value was owing to its rapid growth and the great
absorbent power of its roots in drying up wet and marsh lands, but
it is no longer doubted that Eucalyptus globulus, along with other
species of Eucalyptus, evaporate with water a volatile oil and a volatile
acid, which permeate the atmosphere and contribute to its invigorating
and healthy nature and character.337

The eucalyptus had found its place as a partner in the prevention of
malaria, and it still held its usual stature as an agent in cleansing the
air. The latter would last until
modern medicine got more sophisticated and became disinterested in
old-fashion ideas of treatment or "sanitation."

In 2013, Eucalyptus has become one of the most important plants on the face of the planet. The many uses of this tree and its gum, leaves, and wood, has turned eucalyptus into a major cash crop in countries all over the world.

And even with all the science that has been done, it is still not clear today why and how eucalyptus is so effective in helping reduce symptoms of and even curing everything from cold sores to aching feet. As with so many essential oil based "cures," the evidence of success is in the testimony of the users and the wide spread use based on those testimonies.